music streaming setup

Music Streaming Setup

Setup

This looks more complicated and overwhelming as it is...

Sidenote: you may be more happy using Mopidy if you only want to stream locally from a media server

Overview

+--------------+          +---------+          +------------+ <----------+ +------------+               ++
|              |          |         |          |------------|              | Icecast    |             +--+   +-->
|  MPD client  | +------> |   MPD   | +------> ||          || <----------+ | Client(s)  |          +-+   |
|              |          |         |          ||          ||              |            |          |     |
+--------------+          +---------+          || Icecast2 ||              | (HiFi      | +------> | Speaker   +--->
                                               ||  server  ||       .      |  Receiver, |          |     |
+-----------------------------------+          ||          ||       .      |  Laptop,   |          +-+   |
|Any other Icecast2 capable         | +------> ||          ||       .      |       ...) |             +--+   +-->
|application (i.e. VLC, Mixxx, ...) | +------> |------------|              |            |               ++
+-----------------------------------+          +------------+ <----------+ +------------+

Detailed Explanation

• MPD (Music Player Deamon) - I needed an web-based player to control the audio stream
  • I used ympd
  • Alternatives
    • O!MPD looks really great, however I was to lazy to set up an apache webserver
    • Bragi-MPD
    • Simpd: looks very fance (I find a bit like Soundcloud); BUT a loooot to set-up :(
• Using the Icecast2 allows us to feed the stream (or many streams) by any capable player (examples can be found in the flowchart above)
• Any listener can stream from the Icecast2 server (like a HiFi receiver, VLC player, web-based player, ...)

Doing

Icecast2 server

1. Install the icecast2 package. Follow the instructions of the installer for configuration.
2. Edit /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml (You want <location>, <admin>, increase <sources>)
   1. The default mount point is stream. Only enable it in the settings if advanced options are needed
3. Start and enable the icecast server: systemctl start icecast, systemctl enable icecast or sudo /etc/init.d/icecast2 start etc.

-> Continue with the Streaming with MPD section https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Icecast.

Icecast webpage: http://<hostname>:8000/

• Sidenotes mainly related to the config file: /etc/icecast.xml or /etc/icecast2/icecast.xml
  • Source is your "player" (MPD, Mixxx, ...)
  • Relay nodes are relevant for more complex (yes, it can get even more complex ;) ) scenarios
  • The admin part should be self-explanatory (if not: navigate to your (local) icecast server website)

At this point you could already start streaming (from Mixxx for instance):

• Host = IP/DNS or your icecast server
• Mount = stream
• Login = source
• Password = your password defined during installation

MPD

Basically I followed this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Music_Player_Daemon

• Do the normal Setup
• I used global configuration since I think it's better for a server
• My music database lies under /mnt/database => no permission errors (you can cheat with sudo mount --bind 'sourceDir' 'mountDir' if you have it locally and want to use it this way)
  • To exclude files from the database, create a file called .mpdignore in the parent music directory. Each line of that file may contain a list of shell wildcards. Matching files in the current directory and all subdirectories are excluded.
• Regarding audio configuration see the mpd.conf (and its comments) below

/etc/mpd.conf:

# See: /usr/share/doc/mpd/mpdconf.example

pid_file "/run/mpd/mpd.pid"
db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
state_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpdstate"
playlist_directory "/var/lib/mpd/playlists"
music_directory "/mnt/testmout"
restore_paused "no"
auto_update "yes"
metadata_to_use	"artist,album,title,track,name,genre,date,composer,performer,disc"
replaygain "auto"
# volume_normalization "yes"
filesystem_charset "UTF-8"

# Needed in order to let icecast work (otherwise no audio)
audio_output {
    type "pulse"
    name "MPD PulseAudio Out"
# Needed, otherwise no audio (worth trying without first)
    mixer_type "software"
}

audio_output {
    type "shout"
    encoding "ogg"
    name "MrSpell Teststream"
#	host "192.168.1.224"
    host "localhost"
    port "8000"
    mount "/stream"
# icecast source pw
    password "playerpw"
    user "source"
    quality "9.0"
# samplerate:bits:channels
    format "48000:32:2"
}


# Need this that mpd still works if icecast is not running
audio_output {
    type "null"
    name "fake out"
}

• Then, start and enable the mpd service (systemctl start mpd.service, ...)
• You might get the WARNING: Mar 05 02:51:32 vAntergosXFCE mpd[24818]: exception: bind to '0.0.0.0:6600' failed (continuing anyway, because binding to '[::]:6600' succeeded): Failed to bind socket: Address already in use
  • You should be fine if Mar 05 02:51:32 vAntergosXFCE systemd[1]: Started Music Player Daemon. occurs afterwards (this is because of the IPv6 preference over IPv4 in mpd)

ympd

Almost done!

yaourt -S ympd

• Create a ympd.service config
• Then, start and enable the ympd service (systemctl start ympd.service, ...)
• You might not see any songs in your database (update via mpc update or via the settings menu on your (local) ympd website)

ympd.service:

[Unit]
Description=ympd (music streaming web front-end)
After=mpd.service network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ympd

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

---

MPC

Comand-line tool to control the MPD client

Update music database

mpc update

Get some playing information

$ mpc repeat on
volume: 80%   repeat: on    random: off   single: off   consume: off
$ mpc play
Jono Bacon - Free Software Song 2
[playing] #1/1   0:00/3:18 (0%)
volume: 80%   repeat: on    random: off   single: off   consume: off

Ogg quality levels

I wanted to use Ogg since the ratio qulity/bitrate is slightly better; therefore an overview over the quality levels

Switch	VBR target(kbit/s)  VBR range (kbit/s)
-q 0	~64	            ~64  – ~80
-q 1	~80	            ~80  – ~96
-q 2	~96	            ~96  – ~112
-q 3	~112	            ~112 – ~128
-q 4	~128	            ~128 – ~160
-q 5	~160	            ~160 – ~192
-q 6	~192	            ~192 – ~224
-q 7	~224	            ~224 – ~256
-q 8	~256	            ~256 – ~320
-q 9	~320	            ~320 – ~500
-q 10	~500	            ~500 – ~1000

MP3 quality levels

Switch      Preset	            Target              Typical
                                    bitrate [Kbps]	bitrate [Kbps]
-b 320	    --preset insane	     320 	        320
-V 0	    --preset extreme	    ~240	        220–260
-V 1		                    ~220	        190–250
-V 2	    --preset standard       ~190	        170–210
-V 3		                    ~170	        150–195
-V 4	    --preset medium	    ~160	        140–185
-V 5		                    ~130	        120–150
-V 6		                    ~120	        100–130